[0.11.x] Uranium Power

[MasterBuilder]

A fully maxed out reactor can produce a consistent 10MW.

How exactly? The reactoor itself drains 210kW. I never see it under 'production' in the power summary.

It's not very clear but it looks like it just takes in water and outputs water. It wasn't until I placed a pipe that I realized it was 'superheated' water. (This is probably because DyTech changed it to 'clean water'.)
So I gather it's just an alternative to using a bunch of boilers? Are you saying a single can provide enough water to power steam engines up to 10wM? Am I using it wrong? (I have it filled with 3.5% assemblies.)

[Eurofighter1200]

Is there an output on radioactive waste? It would be funny to have Nulerar waste in form like a chest that pollutet the environment for some time soo you need some space to place the waste and then there are polllution

[Liquius]

So I gather it's just an alternative to using a bunch of boilers? Are you saying a single can provide enough water to power steam engines up to 10wM?

Yeah, that's the gist of it. It's essentially just a glorified boiler.

Is there an output on radioactive waste? It would be funny to have Nulerar waste in form like a chest that pollutet the environment for some time soo you need some space to place the waste and then there are polllution

Currently there's no waste and fuel assemblies last indefinitely. However it is something that I have been thinking about.

[Dantounet]

So i had a game yesterday where i tryed this mod.

Here is what i actually understand about it (sorry if my english isn't the best):

- The reactor is just a boiler working with electricity, and making 275° water instead of 100°
You don't need uranium and fluor product to make it work (why you didn't add it as a component of the very hot water?)

So you basically use electricity to make more electricity, wich is nonsence

- You can use the fluor and the uranium to make fuel assemblies, and they are basically Over Powered blue modules (with different %speed bonus, depending on the refine rate of the hexafluorite thing you use to make it, the highest i made was +250%) with no bad side like using more power of poluting more...

I see what you tryed to do here, you expected people to use the fuel assemblies on the reactor (which has 4 slot?) to make it create a lot more very hot water.

But the problem in my opinion, is than the reactor can work even without the fuel assemblies, so you don't even need uranium and fluor products to make your nuclear fission working (only electricity and water). It's a mess in my opinion.
The other problem is than you can use the fuel assemblies to boost with imba speed % every thing else, like extractors, assembly machines etc.. I guess you didn't want it to be possible but i tryed it and it worked.

Maybe i missed something?


By the way, i enjoyed a lot the part where i made depleted uranium from refining the hexafluoride, using it to make tier 3 munitions and better shells for the tank, that's a great idea!
In my vanilla games, I got bored to make a magazine belt around my factory after i realized than lasers made it useless.
But now with those strong magazines, it's not a waste of time to make it anymore, because it's effective even in late game (and so are the late game magazines upgrades now)

[Liquius]

So i had a game yesterday where i tryed this mod.

Here is what i actually understand about it (sorry if my english isn't the best):

- The reactor is just a boiler working with electricity, and making 275° water instead of 100°
You don't need uranium and fluor product to make it work (why you didn't add it as a component of the very hot water?)

So you basically use electricity to make more electricity, wich is nonsence

- You can use the fluor and the uranium to make fuel assemblies, and they are basically Over Powered blue modules (with different %speed bonus, depending on the refine rate of the hexafluorite thing you use to make it, the highest i made was +250%) with no bad side like using more power of poluting more...

I see what you tryed to do here, you expected people to use the fuel assemblies on the reactor (which has 4 slot?) to make it create a lot more very hot water.

But the problem in my opinion, is than the reactor can work even without the fuel assemblies, so you don't even need uranium and fluor products to make your nuclear fission working (only electricity and water). It's a mess in my opinion.
The other problem is than you can use the fuel assemblies to boost with imba speed % every thing else, like extractors, assembly machines etc.. I guess you didn't want it to be possible but i tryed it and it worked.

It does suck that you can run the reactor without fuel assemblies (but without fuel assemblies you make a net loss on electricity). It also sucks that you can use fuel assemblies with everything else.

However this is the only way I could go about making anything even slightly resembling a fission reactor. I do plan to see what I can do about blocking these exploits, but I am not sure if it's possible yet.

[Dantounet]

If you could thix these 2 things, then the mod would be working fine, as far as i tested it.

One other thing than i think isn't logic, is the fact than you can make depleted uranium without using the fission, you get it from refining the hexafluoride, wich is a separate part.
But maybe it works like it in reality, i don't know much about nuclear fission, but i thought the water was used to cool the reactor when the fission is made, and the depleted uraium was an output product of the fission (so maybe i'm wrong)
Btw you can make the depleted uranium without the reactor, and then you can use it for magazines and shells in a fast way.

[Liquius]

If you could thix these 2 things, then the mod would be working fine, as far as i tested it.

One other thing than i think isn't logic, is the fact than you can make depleted uranium without using the fission, you get it from refining the hexafluoride, wich is a separate part.
But maybe it works like it in reality, i don't know much about nuclear fission, but i thought the water was used to cool the reactor when the fission is made, and the depleted uraium was an output product of the fission (so maybe i'm wrong)
Btw you can make the depleted uranium without the reactor, and then you can use it for magazines and shells in a fast way.

Naturally occurring Uranium consists of 0.7% U235 and 99.3% U238. Uranium-235 is what you want for fission. Uranium with less than ~0.3-0.5% U235 is considered as depleted Uranium. When enriching Uranium you get a lot of depleted Uranium as a byproduct.

As to how a reactor works. When fission happens, a lot of heat is generated. That heat is then transferred to water and that water powers turbines to generate electricity.

[cpy]

Have fun!
http://www.nuclearpowersimulator.com/

[starholme]

I've been thinking for a while about how to solve the 'modules' issue with this mod. I'm a developer by trade, but haven't looked into the api's etc. for factorio yet. It kills too much of my life already

Anyway, if the modding api allows you to detect attached buildings, you could change to treating a cluster of 'fuel assemblies' as a reactor. Something along the lines of:

B = boiler/shielding building. Basically just a water tank, made from steel plates, heats the water.
S = shielding building, really just to keep the Boilers from connecting at the in/output side
F = fuel assembly buildings. These don't need to be 1x1, maybe 2x2 or 3x3. Or research to unlock smaller sizes?

BBBBB
BFFFB <- cold water in
BFFFS
BFFFB -> hot water out
BBBBB

If you say each fuel assembly has a static power amount, plus a bonus % for each side surrounded by another fuel assembly, you would get a nice power scaling I think. The fuel assembly in the middle of the example would contribute a lot more power than a corner one.
Sum up the power of all the assemblies, count the number of Boiler blocks and Shielding blocks, split the power over each evenly(essentially the shield blocks waste energy, to discourage only having a single boiler in a corner).

If there is a ingame limit to the water temperature, bigger reactors would require multiple boiler circuits. IE:

| cold water in
v
BBBBB
SFFFB -> hot water out
SFFFS
SFFFB -> hot water out
BBBBB
^
| cold water in

Maybe make it so it only works if completely surrounded by boilers/shields. Any gaps could either prevent it from producing any power, or you could have gaps cause massive pollution. Either would be fun.

I know there is a 'balancing chest' mod that detects side by side chests and joins them. Might be helpful code in there. https://forums.factorio.com/forum/vie ... cing+chest

Let me know if there's anything I can help with. I don't have time to really maintain a mod right now, but I'd love to do some one time stuff!

[Liquius]

Anyway, if the modding api allows you to detect attached buildings, you could change to treating a cluster of 'fuel assemblies' as a reactor.

This is something I want to try at some point, however I need to do a lot of thinking about how it would work (and find the time).

The first issue with this idea is with the liquids. AFAIK you can only create liquids via recipies, offshore pumps and oil derricks. Scripting only allows you to change the temperature. Now that I think about it, you can probably spawn in buildings to get around that issue.

If there is a ingame limit to the water temperature, bigger reactors would require multiple boiler circuits.

Sort of. There is a max temperature. You can either change that of make a new liquid.

Know that I think about it, this could be easier than I thought.

[chlue]

Hello I have tried out the mod and found it quiet nice. This are my remarks after my initial tryout (based on UraniumPower_0.2.0.zip):

superheated water:
Why a special resource? I initially thought that this will put my steam engines into overdrive mode, but apparently it behaves exactly as normal boiling water.


abuse of fuel assemblies as speed modules for other buildings:
If I get it correctly the reactor creates no pollution at all, so could the fuel assemblies not get a very high pollution scale factor? This way they would still work as designed in the reactor but everything else would be converted to biter-bait when equipped with a fuel assembly.


Scaling of the fuel assemblies:
I feel the lower grade fuel assemblies are already a bit to strong. Maybe scale them a bit quadratic? Math might prove me wrong, but it fells that building a second reactor and skip the fuel enrichment is currently cheaper than going trough the enrichment.

factorio_enrichmentchain.png (8.19 KiB) Viewed 11438 times

If I got it right then I need 4.5 units of base material to create 1 unit with 3.5% enrichment and 3.5 units of depleted fuel. So skipping the enrichment will get me 4.5 times the number of modules with about half the efficiency --> feels cheaper than enrichment for me.


amount of liquid:
The amount of liquid feels a bit excessive and look quiet strange in the pipes when the setup is running. I think it would look more sane if the amount of liquid is scaled to something like 1/10.


speed of the initial uranium hexafluoride production:
If I build a single plant for everything the initial uranium hexafluoride production will congest everything because the return paths of the enrichment plants gets congested. I would prefer if the factories are balanced such that they run stable on a one to one base --> Decrease speed of initial uranium hexafluoride production to just match the loss of the enrichment row.
This would be easier for smaller setups and for more speed one can simply duplicate the building if necessary.

[Liquius]

superheated water:
Why a special resource? I initially thought that this will put my steam engines into overdrive mode, but apparently it behaves exactly as normal boiling water.

Your steam engine should be able to extract more power out of it. Steam engines take 0.1 fluid per tick. The electricity generated is (T1-T2)*C*V where T1 is the temperature of the liquid (275), T2 is the default temperature (15), C is the heat capacity (1KJ), and V is the volume (0.1).

abuse of fuel assemblies as speed modules for other buildings:
If I get it correctly the reactor creates no pollution at all, so could the fuel assemblies not get a very high pollution scale factor? This way they would still work as designed in the reactor but everything else would be converted to biter-bait when equipped with a fuel assembly.

Are you suggesting ramping up the pollution of the modules so that putting it in anything that pollutes ruins your life? That might be worth investigating as a way to discourage that exploit.

As for your balance suggestions, I think they make a lot of sense. Thanks for the feedback.

[chlue]

Your steam engine should be able to extract more power out of it. Steam engines take 0.1 fluid per tick. The electricity generated is (T1-T2)*C*V where T1 is the temperature of the liquid (275), T2 is the default temperature (15), C is the heat capacity (1KJ), and V is the volume (0.1).

Yes I would have expected something like this, but a quick test with a single steam-machine charging a bank of capacitors showed 508kw with normal water and 542kw with the superheated water. Not sure whats going on here.

Are you suggesting ramping up the pollution of the modules so that putting it in anything that pollutes ruins your life? That might be worth investigating as a way to discourage that exploit.

Yep thats exactly the idea

As for your balance suggestions, I think they make a lot of sense. Thanks for the feedback.

Just realized my calculation for the enrichment chain was wrong due to the different ratio for the depleted step (it's 5:15 instead of 10:10). This should lead to something like 6.25 input units for one fully enriched and 5.25 depleted ones, but I guess this only makes the imbalance stronger.

[Liquius]

Your steam engine should be able to extract more power out of it. Steam engines take 0.1 fluid per tick. The electricity generated is (T1-T2)*C*V where T1 is the temperature of the liquid (275), T2 is the default temperature (15), C is the heat capacity (1KJ), and V is the volume (0.1).

Yes I would have expected something like this, but a quick test with a single steam-machine charging a bank of capacitors showed 508kw with normal water and 542kw with the superheated water. Not sure whats going on here.

I forgot about that. I need to investigate further. I seem to remember it also being odd that you can make steam engine lines much larger than 10 and still generate power at the end.

I suspect there might be a cap on the energy generation (so it uses less than 0.1 a tick). However I need have a proper look before making any assumptions.

[cpy]

What a stupid text placement on those uranium hexaflorite, if you had % text up, you'd be able to see what flows inside pipes too you know.
Other than that, if enriched uranium could be used up it would be better but, it's probably good as it is.

[Liquius]

After a bit of experimentation I can confirm that steam engines are capped at 542KW. When this limit is reached consumption of the liquid slows down. No energy is wasted.

[AssaultRaven]

Something that you should bear in mind when dealing w/ uranium on alien planets is that you don't have to use the natural enrichment value found on Earth today! U-235 has a half-life of 703 megayears, so uranium ore had a much higher natural enrichment in Earth's past. Enough, in fact, that you could build a reactor using natural uranium, and there is one know case of a uranium reactor occurring naturally:

"Oklo is the only known location for this in the world and consists of 16 sites at which self-sustaining nuclear fission reactions took place approximately 1.7 billion years ago, and ran for a few hundred thousand years, averaging 100 kW of thermal power during that time."

Natural Nuclear Fission Reactor

Thus, depending on how old the planet of Factorio is, uranium might not require enrichment or might even require more. You can decide!

Neutrons emitted from fission are fast. When they hit water they slow down. The energy given off as they are forced to slow down is Cherenkov radiation, also know as that pretty blue light.

Cherenkhov radiation occurs when a charged particle travels faster than the speed of light in the medium it is traveling thru, so neutrons do not produce it. This is also why it is much easier to produce in water than air. The speed of light thru water it much lower than in air.

[kaldskryke]

Enrichment is part of the fun! Removing it would be a shame, even if it could be realistic.

I've been playing with 0.2 for a little while now, and I have some feedback:
- enrichment requires so little uraninite/fluorite now. I was able to make 5 max-fuel reactors without moving my Electric Miners a single time. With over 12MW per reactor, that's all the power I could ever need. It seems a little easy.
- depleted uranium munitions are very potent. At 12 damage per shot, DU magazines are the only bullet that can scratch Big Biters without upgrades. When fully upgraded, 26.4 damage, they chew through everything pretty quickly. The DU cannon shell easily 1-shots nests and actually makes the tank worth using. As a result, I've found myself processing uranium just for the DU, and putting the enriched stuff in storage.

Is there any plan to add fission weapons? The rocket launcher is sorely underpowered. A new warhead could breathe some new life into it.

EDIT:
Balance suggestions:
- more expensive fuel bundles, about 100 pellets
- less powerful reactors... about half
- slightly less expensive and slightly less powerful DU magazines, say 10 damage for 3 pellets?
- more expensive cannon shells, about 10 pellets. Steel cost is fine.
- Less Slurry per Uraninite
- Less Gas per Fluorite

[Liquius]

Neutrons emitted from fission are fast. When they hit water they slow down. The energy given off as they are forced to slow down is Cherenkov radiation, also know as that pretty blue light.

Cherenkhov radiation occurs when a charged particle travels faster than the speed of light in the medium it is traveling thru, so neutrons do not produce it. This is also why it is much easier to produce in water than air. The speed of light thru water it much lower than in air.

I stand corrected.

Something that you should bear in mind when dealing w/ uranium on alien planets is that you don't have to use the natural enrichment value found on Earth today! U-235 has a half-life of 703 megayears, so uranium ore had a much higher natural enrichment in Earth's past. Enough, in fact, that you could build a reactor using natural uranium, and there is one know case of a uranium reactor occurring naturally:

"Oklo is the only known location for this in the world and consists of 16 sites at which self-sustaining nuclear fission reactions took place approximately 1.7 billion years ago, and ran for a few hundred thousand years, averaging 100 kW of thermal power during that time."

Natural Nuclear Fission Reactor

Thus, depending on how old the planet of Factorio is, uranium might not require enrichment or might even require more. You can decide!

That's an interesting point that I hadn't considered, but I don't think I will play around with that.

Also, although I can't find a source, I seem to remember hearing about a fission reactor that runs with unenriched uranium.

Enrichment is part of the fun! Removing it would be a shame, even if it could be realistic.

I've been playing with 0.2 for a little while now, and I have some feedback:
- enrichment requires so little uraninite/fluorite now. I was able to make 5 max-fuel reactors without moving my Electric Miners a single time. With over 12MW per reactor, that's all the power I could ever need. It seems a little easy.
- depleted uranium munitions are very potent. At 12 damage per shot, DU magazines are the only bullet that can scratch Big Biters without upgrades. When fully upgraded, 26.4 damage, they chew through everything pretty quickly. The DU cannon shell easily 1-shots nests and actually makes the tank worth using. As a result, I've found myself processing uranium just for the DU, and putting the enriched stuff in storage.

Is there any plan to add fission weapons? The rocket launcher is sorely underpowered. A new warhead could breathe some new life into it.

EDIT:
Balance suggestions:
- more expensive fuel bundles, about 100 pellets
- less powerful reactors... about half
- slightly less expensive and slightly less powerful DU magazines, say 10 damage for 3 pellets?
- more expensive cannon shells, about 10 pellets. Steel cost is fine.
- Less Slurry per Uraninite
- Less Gas per Fluorite

When I get around to updating this, fission will be more expensive. However I don't want to overdo it. I don't want solar fields to be easier.

As for weapons, I don't want to dive too far into that (for now). I only added the bullets as a way to use the depleted uranium.

[AssaultRaven]

That's an interesting point that I hadn't considered, but I don't think I will play around with that.

Also, although I can't find a source, I seem to remember hearing about a fission reactor that runs with unenriched uranium.

Yes, now that you mentioned it, that would be the CANDU reactor design. It achieves this by using heavy water as its moderator. Getting heavy water is a process unto itself, though.

As for weapons, I don't want to dive too far into that (for now). I only added the bullets as a way to use the depleted uranium.

Breeder reactors. Most of the potential energy of uranium is in the U-238, you just have to transmute it into a fissile isotope first.